Where to Find Paczkis in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago

If you’ve been checking out my Instagram feed, you may have noticed how crazy I’ve gone for paczkis, the traditional Polish donuts usually filled with jelly or some other sweet variation. Ever since I had my first bite of a paczki, I’ve been a fan and ever year have made it my goal to find the best places to find paczki. And lucky for us (not for our diets), we have plenty of places to get these delightful treats in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago. Here are a few places that we’ve personally tried. I know, it was a hard task but someone had to do it.

Bookmark these for next year, since many of the places no longer accept pre-orders.

Why: For an authentic Polish bakery, you can’t go wrong with Konrad’s. You’ll have plenty of different flavors to choose from: Raspberry, Strawberry, Apricot, Lemon, Custard, Rose, Chocolate Silk, Fresh Strawberry/ whipped cream as well as a prune. You can even order a King’s Cake ($12.96+ tax) with a baby in it such as Cheese, Almond, Cinnamon.

The verdict? In the past, we’ve tried chocolate silk and custard. So yummy. This time around, I slacked and didn’t get a pre-order in. So I only could try those what was available which was lemon and raspberry. They were both very good!

Price: $18/dozen or $1.80 each. Strawberry with whipped cream is $2.95 is not included in the dozen.

Favorite flavor: chocolate silk, custard. My kids loved the lemon.

Tip: Pre-order by emailing [email protected] your order. As of 3/3/19 they have stopped taking pre-orders so call in before you want to come to see if they still have any. They do open at 6 a.m. on Fat Tuesday. They recommend coming early before they sell out.

Why: This is THE place to go to in the NW suburbs. In fact, they churn so many paczkis. (Last I heard they had 60,000 orders!) With only 3 flavors to choose from, Country Donuts is a prime example of a keeping it simple and excelling in what they do.

The verdict: The dough is perfect fluffy while the combo of buttercream and filling melted in our mouths. They definitely don’t skimp on the filling, plus the fillings weren’t too sweet. So, so good!

Favorite flavor: Buttercream and custard

Price: $16+/dozen or $1.60 each.

Tip: Pre-order early by calling their hotline. You can even pick up your order through their drive-through. As of 3/4/19 they are no longer accepting pre-orders. I would check with them to see if they’ll have any available on Fat Tuesday.

Why: It’s one of my favorite coffee shops in the area (Read all about it here), so I’m not surprised that they made amazing paczkis. They aren’t your regular cookie cutter paczkis — they have so many unique flavor choices (fig and nutella?!) I especially dig the fact that everything is made in-house.

Flavors: With so many choices, it was a hard decision. So in the end, I basically tried out each one. I chose cream cheese and lemon curd, Nutella, Irish coffee cream, strawberry frosted chocolate ganache filled, coconut cream filled chocolate frosted, cream cheese and raspberry jam filled, cream cheese and fig jam filled.

The verdict: Oh my, oh my, oh my. Although the donuts were a little bit more expensive, these were out of this world. Anything with the cream cheese filling has won my heart. And don’t get me started on the Irish Coffee Cream with a tinge of salty and perfectly sweet (but not too sweet.) Just wished that the strawberry frosted donut had more frosting, but it was still excellent especially with the chocolate filling.

Favorite flavor: The Irish Coffee Cream was OUT OF THIS WORLD. WOW. My family loved the Nutella one as well.

Price:$2.99 each. Follow their Facebook page for sales. They had a pre-order sale that gave a pretty nice discount.

Tip: Pre-order online or stop by. If you have time, take time to enjoy the ambiance, your paczki, and a cup of coffee (I recently discovered their brown sugar oat latte and fell in love.)